Gilpin Hotel & Lake House

The spa suite provides privacy with hot tub and personalized service. The rooms are spacious and comfortable with excellent sleep quality. However, guests found the prices high and were dissatisfied with wine and food costs.

We had a large room overlooking the Lake staying at the Lake house part of the hotel. It was beautiful and spacious and as it only has 6 rooms very quiet and special. However as it is about a mile from the actual hotel and up a narrow lane with passing places (and pot holes) you do feel a little trapped in the evening. They provide a shuttle for free to their other main hotel building but then you can only eat at 2 places, the Michelin starred Source- my partner is extremely fussy about food, so we ate at the more relaxed Asian style fusion restaurant instead, but this is very over priced for very small portions- 18 pounds for one small grilled aubergine in pieces, with a little spoon of sauce , and 5 pounds for a small bowl of rice. Or 20 pounds for four small lamb pieces with the same spoon of sauce. Starters good but desserts nothing special. Afternoon tea was lovely and beautiful cakes (but it was 30 pounds each), however a lovely treat. They don’t seem to offer a room service or any other lighter options to eat, like fries and sandwiches or burger etc, our neighbours ordered a take away ! The other two issues we had was Water - on arrival there was a note to say you cannot drink the water as it is from the lake. They gave us bottled water but we drank it quickly because the room was so hot (more later) so by morning ran short, and the bath was very brown with black bits when you tried to fill it so I was put off having one The room was incredibly hot, I wondered why staff kept leaving the front door open, it was the underfloor heating that seemed uncontrollable, we turned it right down but it was still 23 degrees at midnight so we opened windows but the thick curtains meant we need to open all the curtains and windows to get a comfortable temperature which meant flies everywhere… On a plus breakfast was delicious though you can’t see what you are having until ordering , I recommend pastries (lovely) instead of toast (despite described as artisan it was just sliced bread) , and the cooked English breakfast was top notch. You can walk around the lake a little but the path petered out, blocked by Bracken and fallen trees , so I couldn’t actually get around which was a shame but the view was lovely the swimming pool was nice and there are hot tubs in the grounds Overall lovely place but could be improved with more eating options at night (room service?) more water offered in your room - perhaps told in advance about the water issue- and fix the heating please . We have underfloor heating at home you should be able to turn it down !